disconcerting instant, though, he wondered if the entirety of Lolth's plane was no more than metaphor, if the minds of he and his companions had given form to something otherwise formless.
The thought disquieted him, and he pushed it from his brain.
"Quenthel," he called and did not like the quaver he heard in his voice. The word echoed off the stone, and when it came back to him, the voice was not his own.
A scream of terror "Quenthel!"
Hysterical laughter "Quenthel."
A despairing mumble "Quenthel."
A wail of pain "Quenthel!"
Pharaun's skin crawled. Sweat beaded his forehead. His skin was clammy. He kept his mouth shut and walked down the pathslowly.
He saw nothing and heard nothing but the twisted echo of his own voice, but. . . He was not alone.
And it was notQuenthel he sensed.
From aheador was it behind?whispering began, hissings, the remnant of ancient screams. The inarticulate mutterings soaked into his soul. He felt itchy, soiled. His breath came fast.
"Who is there?" he called and cringed when the words rebounded to him, screaming in terror.
He reached into his robe and withdrew a wand for each hand the iron shaft that discharged lightning in his right, the zurkhwood wand that fired bolts of magical energy in his left.
He walked on. The walls whispered and muttered in his ears.
"Reaver," they said.
He felt eyes on him from behind, boring into his being. He whirled around, both wands brandished, certain something was there.
Nothing.
The whispers turned to hissing laughter.
Breathing heavily, he put his back to the wall and tried to gather himself. Ghostly hands as cold as a grave reached through the wall and covered his mouth. Panic sent his heart hammering. He pulled hims elf free, fell to the ground, turned and fired three magic missiles into the wall.
There was nothing there.
He scrabbled to his feet.
What was happening? He was not himself. A spell was affecting him. Surely he A sudden shriek rang off the walls, a hopeless wail filled with despair and rage. Pharaun tensed, his knuckles white on his wands.
Ahead of him, a vast, spectral form flew out of the wall on one side of the pass and into the wall on the other, like a fish swimming through the waters of the Darklake. The form moved fast, but he caught a good glimpse of it before it vanished into the stonea vast, bloated, serpentine body of translucent gray, within which squirmed and screamed hundreds or thousands of glowing drow souls.
The Soulreaver.
Its black eyes were bottomless holes; its mouth a cavern. It dwarfed the nalfeshnee; it dwarfed ten nalfeshnees.
It was a living prison for failed souls.
Pharaun imagined his own soul trapped within it, and a pit formed in his stomach. He tried to ignore the shaking in his hands as he put one of the wands back in his robe and withdrew a pinch of powdered irtios, a clear gem. He cast the sparkling powder into the air while speaking aloud the words to a powerful evocation.
He maintained his concentration even when the arcane words echoed back at him as wails.
When he finished, the irtios powder swirled around him, formed a sphere about fifteen paces in diameter, and transformed into an invisible, impenetrable sphere of force that could keep out even incorporeal creatures.
Pharaun prayed to Lolth that it would keep out the Soulreaver. Even it if did, however, Pharaun knew the solution was only a temporary one. The spell would not last overlong, and he could not move the sphere. Still, he needed some time to gather himself. He was agitated, nervous.
The shriek of the Soulreaver repeated but sounded muffled, as though from deep in the ground.
Secure within his sphere, Pharaun tried to settle his racing heart and develop a plan.
The soles of his feet began to tingle. He looked down and saw a distortion in the floor of the pass. He watched in horror as the rock turned translucent under him and the distortion took shape an enormous open mouth lined with teeth.
The Soulreaver was coming up through the floor directly under him, mouth open, wide enough to swallow both Pharaun and the sphere.
Pharaun stared downward, wide-eyed with terror. He tried to find the words to a spell but failed, stuttering incoherently.
Deep down in the Soulreaver's gullet, he saw the tiny forms of wriggling souls, their eyes filled with a terror that mirrored his own.
The walls of the inside of the Soulreaver's mouth rose around him, and he could do nothing but watch as he was engulfed.